1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to tessellation processing of patches in three-dimensional space to produce graphics primitives and more specifically to a system and method for generating portions of tessellated patch topology for processing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Surfaces in three-dimensional space are typically subdivided into patches that are defined by control points. The patches are then tessellated to produce graphics primitives that are processed (rendered) to produce an image. The number of vertices that are produced during tessellation varies depending on the level of tessellation. When a single processing unit is used to perform the tessellation, each input patch may produce any number of vertices. In order to increase the processing throughput it is desirable to distribute the processing workload across multiple execution units in order to perform the processing in parallel.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is a system and method for generating portions of tessellated patches to compute vertex data for processing by multiple execution units.